What's going on?

I hadn't seen a song thrush in Devon since the arctic winter of 2010 but last week when I was in my secret wood I heard a gentle tap-tap-tap. I wonder if that’s a thrush I thought. I kept as quiet as I could so that the creatures of the wood got used to me but nothing emerged that I could see. Then a few days ago I thought I saw a thrush in our garden. Unfortunately I didn’t have binoculars to hand so couldn’t be sure. Yesterday evening however, I saw the thrush-like bird again and was able to grab binoculars and verify that, yes, it was a thrush. And not one but TWO, feeding busily on our unkempt lawn. I was thrilled.

    Here’s a (not very good) picture I managed to take of one of them through glass.

And here, just for fun, is another not-very-good picture (again through glass) which I took at the same time of one of our great spotted woodpeckers, the female I think. They eat us out of house and home, which is why we put the cage around the feeder. As you can see, it hasn’t deterred them. The pair has been around for years, and in the summer they bring their scruffy youngsters to show them the foodbank.

Their latest trick is to hammer at the base of the aerial on the roof just above the bedroom – usually at about five in the morning. (We know it's them because Frog's seen them at it.) The noise is quite extraordinary – loud and metallic and reverberating - and we think they must be signalling as there can’t be much nourishment in a metal pole. I’m trying to persuade Frog to record it so that I can include it on the blog.

Incidentally, we’ve also had a green woodpecker in the garden recently – something I've only seen in August up until now, when they peck the lawn (for ants, says my bird book).

And when I walked into the village yesterday with Ellie there were more anomalies, one bird I haven’t seen since I was a child and another I did see in the winter in the field behind the house but have never noticed over the village before.

    We have to go that way at the moment as there’s bird-scarer somewhere near home and Ellie refuses to leave the garden except in the car, so I drive a mile or so and park next to the road. Ellie then heads off at speed in a westerly direction away from the noise, up a footpath which takes us towards the village. It’s a very pretty walk, but a lot of people use the paths so normally I avoid them.
    Here's a view of the village I took yesterday as we walked.

    Anyway, as we walked around the edge of the village - which was utterly peaceful, more so than the countryside - I noticed flocks of unfamiliar birds in the air. They were shaped like crows but smaller, and fluttered like skylarks but were bigger. One of them landed on the roof of a cottage I was passing and ducked into a nest under the eaves. As I watched, a lovely old lady came out of the cottage.

    ‘I see you’m looking at my jackdaw nest,’ she said.

    ‘Oh,’ I exclaimed. ‘That’s what it is. I was wondering what all those birds were.’
    I waved at the air.

    ‘Them’s starlings,’ she said. ‘I watches them more’n I watches the television.’

What is going on? Is it the lockdown, and if so what is it about the lockdown? Is it us, noticing more, or is it the wildlife? And whatever it is, can we hang on to it as the lockdown lifts?